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Submission + - Technology's Legacy: The 'Loser Edit' Awaits Us All (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The NY Times Magazine has an insightful article putting into words how I've felt about information-age culture for a while now. It's about a phenomenon dubbed the "loser edit." The term itself was borne out of reality TV — once an outcome had been decided, the show's producers would comb back through the footage and selectively paste together everything that seemed to foreshadow the loser's fall.

But as the information age has overtaken us, this is something that can happen to anyone. Any time a celebrity gets into trouble, we can immediately search through two decades of interviews and offhand comments to see if there were hints of their impending fall. It usually becomes a self-reinforcing chain of evidence. The loser edit happens for non-celebrities too, using their social media posts, public records, leaked private records, and anything else available through search.

The worst part is, there's no central place to blame. The news media does it, the entertainment industry does it, and we do it to ourselves. Any time the internet gets outraged about something, there are a few people who happily dig up everything they can about the person they now feel justified in hating — and thus, the loser edit begins.

Comment Blood For the Blood God! (Score 1) 64

by mekkab (#49173287) Attached to: Games Workshop At 40: How They Brought D&D To Britain
And by 'Blood', I of course mean Money. ;) Those minis were not cheap. But Adeptus Titanicus was like a watered down Battletech, but in a good way. You spent more time playing and less time nose deep in rule books. And the mythos! They went deep and wide. A few years ago I was playing Blood Bowl online (soo much easier when the computer does the math for you) and last summer I got the Space Hulk video game for a song on steam (it's literally just the board game in your computer. Terrible video game, but awesome online game simulator).

I hope they stick around for a while longer.

Comment LOL (Score -1, Offtopic) 121

by grub (#48977151) Attached to: Alan Turing's Notes Found After Being Used As Insulation At Bletchley Park
So I've been in meetings all day, then finally get home and I saw this story on /.'s feed. I thought, "ah, it'll be good for some immature homo jokes"

Thank you, /., you did not disappoint. I'm crying from laughing so hard at the from the inane, puerile jokes that I seek out at times likes these.
If you don't like that, well fuck you, too.

Comment Re:Similarity (Score 1) 425

by mekkab (#48971169) Attached to: One Man's Quest To Rid Wikipedia of Exactly One Grammatical Mistake
Mod Parent up, because I came to post this exact thing. In fact, the fascinating thing about Stealth Mountain is the amount of absolute abuse he 'suffers' from those who don't appreciate his corrections. And it's too bad he hasn't posted recently; I can't imagine it's due to a lack of tweet-fodder to work with!

Comment Re: What did you expect? (Score 3, Insightful) 197

by grub (#48903763) Attached to: Google Handed To FBI 3 Wikileaks Staffers' Emails, Digital Data
PGP/GPG is much easier to use these days than it was in the 90's. Plugins exist for many mail clients that do the heavy lifting in the background.

Friends and family are surely tired of my tinfoil hat, they just do not seem to care about their privacy. Many say the "I have nothing to hide" line.

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